http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/current/0927.html
Cockburn on Billy Graham; Doug calls it 'ace on jews'. [Alexander Cockburn
clarifies the role of Jews in American life in his New York Press column
nypress.com/ 15/11/news&columns/wildjustice.cfm] -- Wild Justice Alexander
Cockburn Billy Graham: War Criminal There’s a piquant contrast in the press
coverage of Billy Graham’s conversations with Nixon, as displayed on the
tapes gradually released from the National Archive or disclosed from Nixon’s
papers. Back in April l989, a Graham memo to Nixon was made public. It
was dated April 15, 1969, and was drafted after the evangelist met in Bangkok
with missionaries from Vietnam. These men of God said that if peace talks
in Paris were to fail, Nixon should step up the war and bomb the dikes,
which, Graham wrote, "could overnight destroy the economy of North Vietnam."
Graham lent his imprimatur to this recommendation. Thus Graham was advocating
a policy to the U.S. Commander-in-Chief that on Nixon’s own estimate would
have killed a million people. The German High Commissioner Seyss-Inquart
was sentenced to death at Nuremberg for breaching dikes and other crimes
in Holland in World War II. (His execution did not deter the USAF from
destroying the Toksan dam in North Korea, in 1953, thus deliberately wrecking
the system that irrigated 75 percent of North Korea’s rice farms.) This
disclosure of Graham as an aspirant war criminal did not excite any commotion
when it became public. Very different has been the reception of a new tape
revealing Graham, Nixon and Haldeman palavering about Jewish domination
of the media, and Graham invoking the "stranglehold" Jews have on the media.
On the account of James Warren in the Chicago Tribune, who has filed excellent
stories down the years on Nixon’s tapes, Nixon raises a topic about which
"we can’t talk about...publicly," namely Jewish influence in Hollywood
and the media. Nixon cites Paul Keyes, a political conservative who was
executive producer of the NBC hit Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, as telling
him that "11 of the 12 writers are Jewish." "That right?" says Graham,
prompting Nixon to claim that Life magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times,
the Los Angeles Times and others are "totally dominated by the Jews." Nixon
says network tv anchors Howard K. Smith, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite
are "front men who may not be of that persuasion," but that their writers
are "95 percent Jewish." Magnanimously, Nixon concedes that this does not
mean "that all the Jews are bad," but that most are left-wing radicals
who want "peace at any price except where support for Israel is concerned.
The best Jews are actually the Israeli Jews." "That’s right," agrees Graham,
who later concurs with a Nixon assertion that a "powerful bloc" of Jews
confronts Nixon in the media. "And they’re the ones putting out the pornographic
stuff," Graham adds. Later Graham says that "a lot of the Jews are great
friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me. Because they
know I am friendly to Israel and so forth. They don’t know how I really
feel about what they’re doing to this country." After Graham’s departure
Nixon says to Haldeman, "You know it was good we got this point about the
Jews across." "It’s a shocking point," Haldeman replies. "Well," says Nixon,
"it’s also, the Jews are an irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards."
Within days of these exchanges becoming public the 83-year-old Graham was
disturbed in his dotage and impelled to express public contrition. "Experts"
on Graham were duly cited as expressing their "shock" at Graham’s White
House table talk. Why the shock? Don’t they know that this sort of stuff
is consonant with the standard conversational bill of fare at 75 percent
of the country clubs in America, not to mention many a Baptist soiree?
Nixon thought American Jews were lefty peaceniks who dominated the Democratic
Party and were behind the attacks on him. Graham reckoned it was Hollywood
Jews who had sunk the nation in porn. Haldeman agreed with both of them.
At whatever level of fantasy they were all acknowledging power. But they
didn’t say they wanted to kill a million Jews. That’s what Graham said
about the Vietnamese, and no one raised a bleat. It’s supposedly the third
rail in journalism even to have a discussion of how much Jews control the
media. Since some of the prime founders of Hollywood were Polish Jews who
grew up within 50 miles of one another in Galicia, it’s reckoned as not
so utterly beyond bounds to talk about Jewish power in Hollywood, though
people still stir uneasily. Jude Wanniski remarked last week in his daily
"Memo on the Margin" in his Web newsletter Supply Side Investor that (a)
Graham was not being anti-Semitic, and that (b) it was certainly true to
say that the Jews control discussion of Israel in the media here. There
are a number of stories sloshing around the news now that have raised discussion
of Israel and of the posture of American Jews to an acrid level. The purveyor
of anthrax may have been a former government scientist of Jewish ethnic
extraction with a record of baiting a colleague of Arab origins, acting
with the intent to blame the anthrax on Muslim terrorists. Rocketing around
the Web and spilling into the press are many stories about Israeli spies
in America at the time of 9/11. On various accounts of unknown reliability,
they were trailing Atta and his associates, knew what was going to happen
but did nothing or were simply spying on U.S. facilities. Some posing as
art students have been expelled, according to the AP. Finally, there’s
Sharon’s bloody repression of the Palestinians, and Israel’s apparently
powerful role in Bush’s foreign policy. -----xxxx----- Doug on Cockburn:
"The Jews"? This is getting awfully close to the fantasy figure of anti-Semitism,
The Jew, who exists apart from any actual Jewish humans. And given the
intimate relation between the U.S. national security state and Israel,
isn't it just a bit disturbing that AC put it this way? -------- There
are a number of stories sloshing around the news now that have >raised
discussion of Israel and of the posture of American Jews to >an acrid level.
--Why does the "socialism of fools" survive the end of real socialism?
--------- this answer comes much further down in the thread: Brad DeLong
wrote: >Why does the "socialism of fools" survive the end of real socialism?
1) It wasn't "real socialism," and 2) when the socialism of fools is joined
to inherited attitudes of the British upper class, you can get a particularly
toxic mix. Doug ----------- Because people know nice rich friends who couldn't
REALLY want to let millions of children starve each year and support military
action and death for mere profits, so there must be some "other" group
that really drives oppression in the world. So find a small elite scapegoat
group to blame the failings of capitalism upon. Combined with scapegoating
minority racial groups for the existence of poverty and scapegoating suspicious
foreign groups for foreign policy problems, and you nicely explain away
all the problems of American society without need of saying an unkind word
about your nice rich friends. -- Nathan Newman --------- At the risk of
piling on, let me just advise the untutored that the expression "The Jews"*
doing ANYTHING is prima facie anti-semitic. It is impossible for "the Jews"
to do anything, besides be jewish. If every last media magnate was jewish,
it would still not follow that "the Jews" controlled the media. Jews are
not a corporation. The same follows for "the Arabs," "the Palestinians,"
"the Blacks," etc. I seem to recall Carrol making this point w/respect
to Dave McReynolds and Palestinians, though if you know Dave M. you know
it was more a mistake than an expression of malice. To be honest, I have
to say I can't be sure I haven't employed the same usage w/respect to other
groups. But if I did, I'm pretty sure I wasn't dumb enough to make a column
out of it! Cockburn has really slipped down a rung, and he wasn't that
high to begin with. mbs ------------ Whether it reflects actual anti-semitism
or not, it was pretty fucking stupid. Real genocide is threatening in Palestine
-- and ideologically the Zionists' major weapon is to make "Jew" and "Zionist,"
and therefore "anti-semitism" and "anti-Zionism," synonyms, and for that
reason I consider Cockburn's terminology here to be offering aid and comfort
to Israel. ----------- Yes and when we say "capitalist," what happens to
all those antinomies/aporias of methodological individualism? Anti antisemitically,
Ian ------ "Capitalist" is a description of those wielding economic power--
it is a functional description of hierarchy. "Jew" is not a functional
category, but a scapegoated group which is imagined to be a functional
group by those needing that scapegoat -- even if historically Jews had
been forced into certain functional roles that created the stereotype.
But to speak of capitalists as a group is no different from speaking of
politicians as a group in the political realm. To say that politicians
run the Congress s not pejorative, it is definitional (if possibly simplistic
in a capitalist system where politics is not autonomous from the capitalist
hierarchy). -- Nathan Newman ----- So it's an apriori that 'functional
description' is not a group? We're back to all the pitfalls of epistemology/ontology
of collectivities and their 'identities', 'functions' and 'powers' no?
Are capitalists not a group? Pejoratives aside? That we're both asking
about the politics of definitions is healthy, imo and I'm happy to be wrong.....
Ian ----------- Capitalists do not have functions; they are the functions.
They do not form collectivities; they are the collectivity that wields
power by definition. Are capitalists a "group"? Not in the sense of having
a social idenitity outside their functions, which is where Jews and blacks
and gays and other identity groups differ. To the extent that you define
a "capitalist" as those wielding economic power over others through control
of capital in society, they are an identifiable group whose characteristics
are identical with their identity. All capitalists control capital; all
those who control capital are capitalists. Thus a group identified. Jews
may have a pervasive presence in Hollywood, but not all those in Hollywood
are Jews, and not all Jews are in Hollywood. Very different Nathan ---------
I love it when you talk sociology to me. Nathan has it nailed down tight,
here, at least when it comes to the difference between political analysis
of power structures versus insensitive stereotyping of ethno-identity groups.
But I am adrift in my own puddle of murky thinking on this issue, so let
me throw some mud around to see if anything recognizable splashes out.
The problem with Ace is that he has slid into language that stereotypes
Jews in a mild way for many years. This is the root of the battle I had
with him over criticism of ADL. I want to make very sure that my criticism
of ADL on certain matters does not give aid and comfort to antisemites
and neonazis who use a criticism of ADL to promote bigotry against Jews.
Ace interprets this as me being an apologist for ADL. Well, sometimes I
agree with ADL on matters such as the danger of racist skinheads; and sometimes
I disagree with them, primarily over issues involving government surveillance
and their leadership's habit of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Daniel Pipes, in his book on Conspiracy Theory, argues that Marxism is
a conspiracy theory that scapegoats the wealthy and powerful in a society.
This argument is flawed for the very reason Nathan lays out. Accurately
identifying a group of people such as capitalists or Power Elites who play
a functional role in a society is not the same as concocting a claim that
Jews or Freemasons or the New World Order secretly runs the world. But
some leftists do create phantoms to scapegoat--just usually not ethno-identified
ones. That is still a problem. When leftists start to use the language
of scapegoating and conspiracism, (talking about the world run by a handful
of secret elites or the CIA using radio control to fly planes into the
twin towers), in their criticism of elite power and corporate globalization,
it opens the door to scapegoating of ethnic groups by denizens of the fascist
right. Ace on the Jews is an example of how this process begins. Instead
of pointing to institutions and structures of power, there will be those
who read his column as proof that THE JEWS are secretly running things.
And when they go looking for further proof, there is a plethora of antisemitic
conspiracy crap on the Web to lead them down that ugly path. I know that
is not the intent of Ace, but insensitive language has consequences. But
I think Ian has a point, too. And it may need more teasing out. When we
raise a criticism of "Capitalists" or "Power Elites," are we truly identifying
groups based on their interchangeable function as part of a set of institutions
or structures of power and domination? Or are some critics creating a chimeric
scapegoat? And did the Ace column do both? Creating a chimeric scapegoat
that both mis-identified the functional power relationships and stereotyped
an ethnic group? Nathan...Ian...bail out my puddle...please Chip Berlet
------------- The classic version of this-- right populist and left --
is to identify some institution whose members happen to be powerful and
then target that institution as the source of their power-- the Council
on Foreign Relations, the Carlyle Group, and so on. In most cases, such
institutions look for people who already have power and invite them as
members, so the organization has no real power unto itself. Such institutions
may facilitate strategic cooperation among such elites, but then so do
any other social clubs. But the key issue that often divides left analysis
is whether elite capitalist power acts in a purposeful manner-- ie. is
a self-conscious organization of power that thrawts what would be a good
society if only the conspiracy of capitalists had not outmaneuvered them
-- or whether capitalist elite power is largely passive, a function of
shared interests and parallel actions done without much coordination but
with largely consistent results This difference in view of capital power
lays at the base of a lot of disagreements on the Left, since for those
with the more coordinated view of capital power, anyone who takes action
that is in the interest of capitalists is seen as an active conscious agent
of oppression, while those who take the more passive view of capitalist
power see many people taking such actions because of the logic of capital
power and the lack of obvious alternatives given that power. Are unions
collaborators with management (active capital agents finding willing pawns)
or are they uncreative opponents of capital seizing on the best deal they
think available to benefit their members out of fear of runaway shops?
Are Dems active collaborators with capitalists or are they progressive-minded
people whose lack of creativity and lack of mass mobilizing ability make
them think that compromise with capital is the only way to avoid capital
flight and even worse policies by the GOP? Note that those with the active
view of capital power tend to see malevolence in the motives of unsure
allies, while those leftists (like myself obviously) tend to see incompetence,
lack of organizing ability and lack of creativity as the cause of compromise
by such allies. I remember when I was first interviewed for a union organizing
job by the late Vinnie Serabella, the HERE Organizing Director who revived
the whole union's organizing program and originally brought current President
John Wilhelm into the union. He looked at me back in 1988 and asked why
unions were getting destroyed across the country. The wrong answer was
to say Reagan policies or corporate strategy, but rather that unions themselves
just forgot how to organize. He noted that for decades, even after unions
no longer knew how to organize like they once did, Sheraton would call
up the union and tell them to get their organizers in a few weeks before
a new hotel was opening. All that happened in the 1970s is that business
wised up and just stopped making that call-- nothing that dramatic, they
just did what was in their self-interest and called the unions bluff. In
the same terms, globalization is not a strategy but the natural result
of thousands of companies looking for the cheapest deal and supporting
policies that fit their interests on those policies. And the IMF and the
World Bank are not agents of that coordinated strategy (an active executive
committee of the ruling class), but merely befuddled development liberals
enacting policies they think will serve economic growth under the threat
of constant capital flight. More creative policies with active mobilization
by working class allies would allow far different, more humane policies
but such wavering liberals don't believe they will work or their is the
working class power to implement them. Now what is implied by this difference
in the active or passive view of capitalist power? If you see capital as
an active conspiracy, where people are either its agents or its opponents,
the first order of business is to clarify the oppositional strategic centers
and expel the compromising agents of capital from alliances. Strategic
clarity even at the expense of fewer numbers is the premium goal in order
to outmaneuver the strategic intelligence of the capitalist conspiracy.
On the other hand, if you see capital power as more passive, you assume
that there is a large middle ground of good-hearted folks compromising
out of fear of that capital power, yet not part of any organized agency
of that power. The first order of business is then to recruit that middle
to your side by demonstrating that working class power and creative policies
can be a more effective alternative to desperate compromising policies.
The passive power of capital depends on division and weakness of working
class forces, in this view, so the main goal is strengthening unified power,
which will then open up further recruitment since greater working class
power then convinces wavering liberals that there are viable alternatives
to compromises with capital. Now the reality is that capital power has
both active and passive elements, so there is a reasonable logic in both
responses by the Left, even where they are sometimes contradictory, so
the real debate is emphasis and finding creative ways to both increase
strategic clarity by left forces while still expanding numbers into the
wavering middle. Where people despair of that clarity or feel isolated
in their numbers, scapegoating some group, either below them or among the
elite, becomes very attractive as an explanation of their failure to organize.
And that emphasizes another difference between active and passive views
of capital power. An active view of capital power sees any shift to the
right in policies as the result of betrayal by some group that needs to
be identified and attacked. A passive view of capital power sees such capital
power as relatively constant, so any rightward shift in policy must be
explained by changes in the political economy (easier capital flight due
to globalization) that has convinced wavering liberals that compromise
is needed or in failures of left organizing that lead wavering liberals
to be skeptical that there is the necessary working class power to implement
alternative solutions that defy capital power. The more mixed view sees
certain policies accellerating the changes in political economy that in
turn make the logical compromises with capital more imperative-- but even
these are sometimes inadvertently supported by some progressive groups
for their own short-term reasons, even as the long-term results benefit
capital power; see deregulation policies in the 70s, notably supported
by Nader and consumerist progressives, against the desire of conservative
unionists who knew their power would be undermined in favor of capital
power. Again the disunity of progressives allows the active elements of
capital to pick off allies through short-term enticements to this or that
constituency. So my view ends up being that while I grant the active elements
of capital power, they are best defeated not by sectarian retreat into
purist strategic organizational centers on the Left, but by maximum unity
of alliances among progressive groups such that short-term policy offers
by capital will be less attractive. And this is best accomplished by hard
organizing to make an alliance with the left and through them firm alliances
with other progressives attractive because we bring some real measure of
power to the table. -- Nathan Newman ----------- Note that those with the
active view of capital power tend to see malevolence >in the motives of
unsure allies... ---------- Not to mention dwel in a fantasy world... Brad
--------- The one thing this seems to miss is the extent to which certain
of these - esp. Carlyle and the like - manage to bridge the gap between
self-interested, heavily-capitalized corporate entities with a very broad
reach, and supposedly public-minded governing bodies at the highest levels,
via the acquisition of highly-placed members who have their feet firmly
placed in both sectors. Naturally there has always been functional intermingling
of the two, from the smallest townships on up to the level of national
governments. But there seems to be a significant qualitative and quantitative
difference with some of the examples we're seeing today in areas like oil
and defense. Sages might proclaim it a sign that we've reached some kind
of saturation point or critical mass with regard to capitalism, with the
potential outcomes being global emancipation of the working class or the
end of everything as we know it. (Perhaps this is where the Third Way comes
in: a sort of structurally inevitable stop-gap measure, staving off both
revolution and total annihilation...) -- / dave / ---------- Well that's
the politics of storytelling and how cultures and subcultures and subsubcultures
are partly constituted by rivalrous explanations for why individuals and
groups do what they do. Conspiracism is misplaced and misidentified ascription
of intentionality run amok, the hallmark of bad storytelling. The best
response is to continue facilitating and sustaining literacy regarding
the dynamic interplay of agency/institution/function/role/identity. Hell
there are economists who've asserted that Michael Perelman's "The Invention
of Capitalism" is a conspiracy theory book. Ian ---------- Ok. So when
goups enact/perform functions and roles that are significantly constitutive
of their identity and others critique them in those roles and are rebuked
for it because those who are criticized muddle the distinction between
role/function/identity to deflect criticism, how do we mitigate or 'short
circuit' the potential for exacerbated misunderstandings? For instance,
are atheists who criticize the theological philosophical beliefs-practices
of Jews anti-semitic? How should they go about deflecting the charge of
bigotry and anti-semitism? What about Christians who criticize those beliefs?
And what about Jews who criticize Hindu and Muslim beliefs? At what point
do we determine that criticism of the acts and beliefs that are constitutive
of group identity -and the roles and functions they enable- becomes morally
unjustified and inexcusable? I know we're dealing with contestable boundaries,
to say the least, but I fear for the worst in this century if we don't
get some sort of handle on these issues given the current level of bellicosity
on the planet. Ecumenism has failed and the last thing we want is the 'clash
of civilizations' theory to become a self-fulfilling dynamic. Ian -----------
Frankly, I find the breast-beating about anti-semitism silly when Christians
say Jews are damned to hell. Of course, under most Christian theology,
Jews are damned-- that's what the New Testament says. Why should Jews care
the Christian god says they are going to hell, since they don't believe
in that god. So the bare point of theological dispute is irrelevant-- it's
fake tolerance to ignore those issues. The crucial issue is whether such
theological statements of moral damnation are translated into political
terms of the discussed group losing civil rights. The saving grace is that
every major religion specifically makes room for unbelievers in their political
theory of society-- Christians have their "render under Caesar" views and
Jews obviously have had to deal with other groups and Islam has a long
history of political tolerance for other religious groups within their
polities. Christianity actually has the worst track record of such political
tolerance within its states. So all the clash of civilizations rhetoric
has nothing to do with fundamental (in both meanings) theological impulses
in the various world religions; it is about much more current grievances
and military adventurism that is harnessing the rhetoric of religion for
its own uses. Actually, the worst thing that happens to any religion is
to become too identified with a particular nation-state, since then it
ends up absorbing all the discrediting that politics necessarily involves.
I will bet that within twenty years, because of the mullah-politics in
Iran, that country will be the most secular state in the region. The US
is probably the most religious Christian country in the world precisely
because of its separation of church and state, a point many of the original
religious First Amendment supporters predicted based on their experience
with state religions in Europe. -- Nathan Newman ---------- Seth responding
to Doug's question (which I put immediately after exhibit wan): Sure, I
see what you mean. The whole subject is so vexed. In Cocky's case, I don't
suspect any real anti-semitism. He likes to break taboos and maybe he failed
to cultivate the right tone for this one. On the other hand, his stuff
about Jews and the media is just weird. He got some of it from Jude Wanniski,
though. How do you like that, Doug, you Jude-lover? But Ace was at least
aiming in a vague way to make a point that deserves to be made. If some
Internet conspiracy theorist proposed that Turkish intelligence was behind
9/11, no one would accuse - or even suspect - him of bigotry against Turks
as an ethnic group. But someone mentions the Mossad and right away the
listener almost instinctually begins to probe for signs of anti-Semitism.
I mean, I've found myself doing this too. Then the question arises - to
what extent is this a justified response to the reality of anti-Semitism,
and to what extent is this a specemin of political paranoia? Chaim Weizmann
- the leader of pre-state Zionism and then Israel's first president - used
to go around hyping the role of "the Jews" in the Bolshevik revolution.
It's not clear if he actually believed this or if it was a useful thing
to say to persuade frightened British officials to give in to Zionist demands.
But the fact is, there were a lot of Jews among the Bolsheviks. And there
are huge numbers of Jews in the US media and in Hollywood. Jews joke about
this all the time, I don't see why anyone else should be timid about mentioning
it. But the idea that Jewish "media influence" is the cause of the pro-Israel
bias is ridiculous. Before Israel became a prized US asset, the New York
Times had a policy of not allowing Jewish correspondents to cover Israel.
There's also evidence the Times covered up information about the Holocaust
out of fear of being seen as advancing some Jewish cause. Today the Times
has several Jewish correspondents in Israel and, to my knowledge, no Arabs.
Right now I'm reading Tom Segev's terrific book about Palestine under the
British mandate. His main thesis is that British policy was pro-Zionist
- not because it was in the British interest but because the British really
believed the anti-Semitic fantasies about world Jewish power. Yet throughout
the book Segev almost goes out of his way to show instances of the extraordinary
influence the Zionists did actually manage to wield. Everyone seemed to
believe the Jews had power, so they complied with Jewish demands. The when
others saw this, they concluded that the Jews really did wield power. In
the end, the anti-Semitic fantasy came true because everyone believed it.
Seth ---------------- Gave me the creeps. I didn't circualte that effort
- in fact, I didn't finish reading it. ---------- >But Ace was at least
aiming in a vague way to make a point that deserves to >be made. ---------
But it has to be made very carefully, or you end up discrediting the point
entirely. And to talk about Israel's influence on U.S. policy without talking
about Israel's usefulness to the U.S. is seriously wrong. And coming from
someone who understands language and ideology as well as AC does, it's
hard to blame vagueness or infelicity. Doug ----------------- I was lunching
with a famous lady, a lady a little lacking in wit but full of very high
sounding ideas. If you were in doubt concerning the meanings of freedom
and liberty you could ask this lady and receive the most lyrical of answers.
I can best describe her by confessing that she was more famous than intelligent—which
is one of the hazards of democracy. In New York you can pick out easily
the people of fame. They look and walk like pall bearers. Perhaps this
is because they are carrying truth and beauty to their graves. Or perhaps
it is because they are merely stiffened with their press notices and as
conscious of their fame as if it were a paraffin injected into their veins.
Whenever I met this lady with whom I was lunching, I wondered if Joan of
Arc or Semiramis, the one-breasted queen of the Amazons, had been as full
of visible importance. I doubt it, for the importance of spiritual and
royal leaders is a small thing beside the strut of those who wear the paper
crowns of ideas. This lady and I have known each other for some years and
our meetings have been always of an amiable nature. We admired each other
but, having ideas more or less alike, there was never much we could talk
about. There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain
age. Our lunch this time was a bit duller than usual. We gossiped aimlessly
for an hour on the stupidity of the movies, the stupidity of the theater,
and the stupidity of literature from which it can be seen that we were
avoiding any topics of importance. We moved into the library, rather elegantly,
to have our coffee. Here my hostess fell silent and took to regarding me
with a rolling and pregnant eye. Her fine brow became full of furrows and,
by this and other signs, I knew she was deep in thought, or possibly working
around to asking some favor of me. “I would like you to tell me something,
very frankly," she said, finally. "Do you mind talking about Jews?” "It
is one of my favorite topics," I answered, lying gallantly—for at that
time, a year ago, it was a topic with which I had hardly more than flirted.
"I am very glad," she said. "Jews are often a little skittish about the
subject." "You don't have to be too tactful," I said. "Jewishness is not
a venereal disease.” “I was sure you'd feel just that way," she said, "because,
after all, you are not the kind of a Jew who thinks that any discussion
of Jews is intended as a personal slight." "No, I am not that kind of Jew,"
I said soothingly. But I was socially a little surprised. It had never
occurred to me that my friend regarded me as a Jew of any kind. I sat up.
Here was the little slap that pinks the face of the American Jew. He fancies
himself a social, spiritual, and literary ally—an individual colored only
by his ideas and achievements—and presto! he hears his true name called
over a coffee cup. My hostess was looking at something special— not quite
a dinosaur, but a Jew. Her eyes were a trifle defiant and her cheeks flushed.
I was aware that after many years of intellectual kinship, a divorce had
taken place. We were no longer two Americans in a library, as alike as
the stripes on our flag. We were a pair of unrelated and mysterious coffee
drinkers. I beamed at the lady, for it was an important moment in my life—the
first in which I had ever been addressed as a Jew—and thus called upon
to be one. “What do you want to know about Jews?" I asked. "A great deal,"
she said, "a very great deal." "My information is a little limited," I
said. "Renan is a better authority. There is also a magnificent modern
scholar named Klausner. He lives in Palestine." "That's the whole trouble!"
she cried. "Scholars, historians! They can tell us nothing about Jews.
But you can. Because you are the greatest sort of authority—the thinking
Jew. The Jew who knows himself." The compliment confused me and I was silent.
"I would like to know," she went on, "how you explain the unpopularity
of the Jews. I mean, what do you think it is about the Jew that makes him
so constant a victim? What is it in him that attracts so much anger and
rouses people everywhere?" The question embarrassed me. It had too much
eagerness in it. It did not seem to ask for an answer so much as to make
an unanswerable statement— that the Jews were to blame for their unpopularity.
I had the impression that my hostess was accusing me of withholding vital
information from the world. She seemed to be asking me, as a Jew, to break
down and confess something that would clear up the murder of the three
million Jews of Europe and also throw a light on the true secret of anti-Semitism
everywhere. "Don't you see that only a Jew can speak on this subject,"
she said, "because he is actually inside it? Not outside it." The picture
came to me of an angry policeman badgering a corpse for explanations of
the crime committed against it. I am not a corpse, nor do I even feel myself
a victim. Nor do I bear the marks of blows that have laid low other Jews.
I was not in the picture—but I was there. “The Jews complain," she spoke
on, "they suffer dreadfully. And they accuse. But they never stop to reason
or to explain or to figure the thing out and tell the world what they,
and only they, know." The picture of my hostess became clearer. She was
policeman intent on solving a crime by arresting the corpse. “You are asking
for introspection from Amos Lasky," I said. "Who is Amos Lasky?" she demanded.
"Amos is a gentleman who was mugged last week" I said. "He was returning
home from a card party and five hoodlums beat him up and took his winnings
away. He died in Bellevue Hospital this morning, leaving a wife and three
children." "Nothing of the sort," she said. "Jews are not Amos-victims.
They are—how shall I put it?—collaborative victims, a thing they refuse
to see. I am asking them only to help clear up a situation that has become
too wretched, too horrible to go on in the dark. And I am asking you to
use your mind." She continued to stride and speak, and I did as she requested.
I used my mind—but in silence. For my thoughts had a greater fascination
for me than they might for her. I thought, as she flung her humanitarian
phrases about the library—a library filled with the noblest minds of the
modern centuries—that my hostess was suffering from a malady become as
common in the world as a head cold. She had picked up some anti-Semitism
germs. There was yet no fever, but the sneeze was there. This lady, who
had stood for years on the side of the angels, was giving voice to attitudes
a trifle short of divine. It was a melancholy thing to hear. I wondered
where the germs had come from and how this lapse had happened. (...) The
above is from Ben Hecht's _A Guide For The Bedevilled_, written

in 1944. Hecht's role
in this thing we call life is complex and contradictory, but I thought
the above was interesting nonetheless... -- / dave / --------- These attacks
on Cockburn (who seems to be disliked for other reasons by members of this
list) take of the form of traditional American excoriation of comsymps:
"Well, perhaps he's not actually an anti-Semite, but he's soft on anti-Semitism:
you can tell by the *way* he talks." What did he in fact say in his offending
column (entitled in the CounterPunch version "When Billy Graham Planned
To Kill One Million People"?) That the nasty remarks about Jews by a recipient
of the Jabotinsky (!) Award -- a remarkable datum brought to our attention
by Yoshie -- were rapidly apologized for, while the Rev. Graham's approval
of war crime and mass murder requires not the slightest remorse. Racism
is acceptable when it is consonant with a foreign policy run by an American
elite, but if not, not. Abba Eban said a generation ago that "one of the
chief tasks of any dialogue with the Gentile world is to prove that the
distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism is not a distinction
at all." But now we've gone further: even to draw attention to American
anti-Jewishness in the conversation of an ex-president, or to note that
"this sort of stuff is consonant with the standard conversational bill
of fare at 75 per cent of the country clubs in America, not to mention
many a Baptist soiree," is somehow to be tarred with he same brush, especially
if like Cockburn, one has written mordant attacks on current Israeli policy,
made possible only by the United States. (See "The Nightmare in Israel,"
www.counterpunch.org/nightmareisrael.html.) On what can be said and not
said in the US, and the political motives behind it, Cockburn seems to
me to have it right, and his critics obfuscating that. --CGE ----------
Oh really? I haven't noticed much reticence on this list about criticizing
Israel or U.S. support for Israel or the U.S. media's often disgraceful
reporting on the Middle East. This isn't the Dissent editorial board, after
all. The minute anyone starts going on about The Jews, though, alarms should
be sounded. I've never heard Noam Chomsky talk like that, have you? Doug
---------- AC is not an anti-Semite, and neither is Chomsky, altho' the
latter is frequently charged with that, as you know. (For one of the more
scurrilous examples, see Werner Cohn, "Partners in Hate.") But each is
frequently charged with giving aid and comfort to anti-Semites. (And, for
all his filial piety, I think there are those who would find reference
to Cockburn's "inherited attitudes of the British upper class" risible.)
Cockburn's "going on about the The Jews" in the column in question is a
matter of pointing out endemic anti-Jewishness in the US -- a matter that
even Nixon knew was impolite to mention. I think what upsets people (not
just on this list) is Cockburn's going on about the Jewish state. --CGE
---------------- I have no problem with Cockburn exposing WASP antisemitism
but why does he go on to mention how the Jews control Hollywood and how
Mossad is spying on the US? The problem of Israel, an ethnical racist state
founded on religious dogma, is bad enough without this confused Jew-talk.
There are many "Jews" in the US who would like to speak out against Zionism
but are simply afraid to bec Mossad has paid them a visit, as it has to
each and every prominent US "Jew". Mossad is so active in the US that it's
impossible to say with certainty how much the US Jewish community support
for Israel is due to "Jewishness" and how much to sheer intimidation. When
Jewish ethnicity becomes state ideology, Jewish ethnical identity becomes
subject to state policy. It reminds me of Turkish Cypriots, who would much
rather be Europeans but are forced by the Turkish Cypriot state to remain
loyal to their ethnicity and hold the line. Hakki -------------- How the
Jews control Hollywood" is a tendentious summary of Cockburn's observation,
"Since three of the prime founders of Hollywood, were Polish Jews who grew
up within fifty miles of each other in Galicia, it's reckoned as not so
utterly beyond the bounds of propriety to talk about Jewish power in Hollywood,
though people still stir uneasily" -- apparently on this list as well.
And why is spying by the Israeli secret police in and on the US an unmentionable
topic? It certainly seems to have taken place. But I don't think it's true
to say that Israel, although clearly a racist state, is "founded on religious
dogma." Nor do I think it's the case that "many 'Jews' in the US who would
like to speak out against Zionism but are simply afraid to bec Mossad has
paid them a visit, as it has to each and every prominent US 'Jew'." (And
why the quotes?) The changing relationship of American Jews to the state
of Israel is notably set out in Norman Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry.
--CGE ------------------ But it _wasn't_ and _isn't_ "Jewish power," any
more than it was "The Jews." It was the individual power of a group of
people who happened to come from X. It makes sense to speak of "Zionist
power" or "Israeli power," (and I don't really share Ian's concerns about
this, but that another time). It simply makes no sense at all to speak
of Jewish Power -- in part because what _appears_ as "Jewish Power" is
something else, and to call it "Jewish Power" is to make oneself unable
to understand _why_ it appears that way. It doesn't even ask the questions
that need to be asked. To say "Its all the capitalists' doing" is clumsy,
but it fairly clearly asks a question -- that is, it leads to searching
for an explanation of why and how the capitalists do it -- and that can
(has often) led to a deeper understanding statable in better terms. And
if the speaker herself who uses "Jewish Power" understands it in a non-antisemitic
way, why in the hell can't she (or Cockburn) SAY it in a clear way that
doesn't cause people to "stir uneasily" (and they are stirring uneasily
because they KNOW that there are a lot of people out there who will really
think it is "The Jews" (in the sense of "The X" that Max legitimately condemns).
The Americans are driving SUVs and making themselves fat on Big Macs. Such
statements are pretty obnoxious too, because as understood they really
apply to working-class Americans, not on the structures and the class oppression
which lead _many_ to adopt those habits. Carrol ---------------- I would
certainly be the last person to duck the issue of Mossad infiltration in
the US. What I'm saying is that the state of Israel should not be thought
of or spoken of as the seat of world Jewry because its aggressive zionism
oppresses and disenfranchises not just the Arabs but also Jews. Jewish
and Palestinian bodies are strewn about Israel and Palestine because of
the ultrazionists, who manipulate the Israeli public with provocations
like Sharon's raid on the Haram al-Sharif in order to further their ideological
and military agenda. Israel Shahak made a pretty good case in his Jewish
History, Jewish Religion, that zionism is a continuation of classical Judaism,
which is totalitarian in nature, as I maintain that Islam is. The foundation
of zionist ideology is talmudic. What's more, religious fanatics wield
great political clout, not to mention Uzi's and M-16's, in Israel. Remember
also that zionists were originally anti-socialist and pro-nazi, i.e. political
opponents of Jewish progressive thought. Here's a quote from ch. 4: -----------------------------------------------------------
In fact, close relations have always existed between Zionists and antisemites:
exactly like some of the European conservatives, the Zionists thought they
could ignore the 'demonic' character of antisemitism and use the antisemites
for their own purposes. Many examples of such alliances are well known.
Herzl allied himself with the notorious Count von Plehve, the antisemitic
minister of Tsar Nicholas II;27 Jabotinsky made a pact with Petlyura, the
reactionary Ukrainian leader whose forces massacred some 100,000 Jews in
1918-21; Ben-Gurion's allies among the French extreme right during the
Algerian war included some notorious antisemites who were, however, careful
to explain that they were only against the Jews in France, not in Israel.
Perhaps the most shocking example of this type is the delight with which
some Zionist leaders in Germany welcomed Hitler's rise to power, because
they shared his belief in the primacy of 'race' and his hostility to the
assimilation of Jews among 'Aryans'. They congratulated Hitler on his triumph
over the common enemy - the forces of liberalism. Dr Joachim Prinz, a Zionist
rabbi who subsequently emigrated to the USA, where he rose to be vice-chairman
of the World Jewish Congress and a leading light in the World Zionist Organization
(as well as a great friend of Golda Meir), published in 1934 a special
book, Wir Juden (We, Jews), to celebrate Hitler's so- called German Revolution
and the defeat of liberalism --- This is not a state of affairs that would
naturally enchant the better-educated Jews of the US diaspora, many of
whom are no longer practising Jews (whence the apostrophes). But like the
progressive Israelis who were mobbed out of power by wave after wave of
forced immigration, progressive US Jews for whom Sharon's brand of zionism
is abhorrent dare not raise their voices for fear of what Mossad and its
confederate the ADL would do to them. As far as Cockburn is concerned,
his piece obscures the fact that Jews are not a socially or politically
homogeneous entity except in antisemitic and zionist propaganda. Some Jews
hate and fight against what Israel has become and others are its silent
and bewildered victims almost to the same extent as the Palestinians. Hakki
------------- What's more, religious fanatics wield great > political clout,
not to mention Uzi's and M-16's, in Israel. Remember also ---------- mbs:
I see the link, but as you know zionism was founded by secularists, and
the most orthodox were the last to jump on the bandwagon. ---------- >
that zionists were originally anti-socialist and pro-nazi, i.e. political
> opponents of Jewish progressive thought. Here's a quote from ch. 4: ----------
mbs: this is way overdrawn. a non-trivial proportion of the secularist
founders were socialists. The context in which the fact of contacts and
collaboration are raised is important. Zionism was not 100 percent rotten,
and the citation of nazi connections lends itself to you-know-what, so
one needs to be careful. ----------- Edmund Hanauer -- the director of
SEARCH for Justice and Equality in Palestine/Israel , the speaker whom
we recently invited to give a talk at the Ohio State University, as you
may recall -- brought up the topic of collaboration between Zionists and
often anti-Semitic Christian evangelicals in his talk. While Max says it's
all because "most American Jews support a Jewish state and accept the need
for some measure of realpolitik as the price for that, including alliances
with obnoxious people," comparable to the majority of Ohio voters' support
for Republicans, I think that most American Jews (many of whom are more
liberal than conservative) are actually unaware of the degree to which
those who claim to represent American Jewry, as well as Israel, have made
a marriage of convenience with Jew haters (not just garden-variety "obnoxious
people"!). I think Jewish leftists can stir up a meaningful controversy
if they call out Zionist leaders on their habit of sleeping with enemies.
***** Evangelicals and Israel: Theological Roots of a Political Alliance
by Donald Wagner Donald Wagner is director of the Center for Middle Eastern
Studies at North Park University in Chicago and director of Evangelicals
for Middle East Understanding. This article appeared in The Christian Century,
November 4, 1998, pp. 1020-1026. Copyright by The Christian Century Foundation;
used by permission. Current articles and subscription information can be
found at www.christiancentury.org. This article prepared for Religion Online
by Ted & Winnie Brock. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
visited Washington this past January, his initial meeting was not with
President Clinton but with Jerry Falwell and more than 1,000 fundamentalist
Christians. The crowd saluted the prime minister as "the Ronald Reagan
of Israel," and Falwell pledged to contact more than 200,000 evangelical
pastors, asking them to "tell President Clinton to refrain from putting
pressure on Israel" to comply with the Oslo accords. The meeting between
Netanyahu and Falwell illustrates a remarkable political and theological
convergence. The link between Israelis Likud government and the U.S. Religious
Right was established by Natanyahu's mentor, Menachem Begin, during the
Carter and Reagan administrations.... ...Israel's occupation of Arab lands
after 1967 created tension between many Jewish organizations and the mainline
Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic communities. Many Jewish organizations,
particularly lobbying groups such as the American Israel Political Affairs
Committee (AIPAC), turned to the growing evangelical community for support.
As Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee stated, "The evangelical
community is the largest and fastest-growing bloc of pro-Jewish sentiment
in this country." AIPAC and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) added staff
to focus on relationships with evangelicals and fundamentalists. The Israeli
ministry of tourism eyed evangelicals as a major new market for Holy Land
tours and thus a source of revenue. ...[F]ull-page advertisements appeared
in major U.S. newspapers stating, "The time has come for evangelical Christians
to affirm their belief in biblical prophecy and Israel's divine right to
the land." Targeting Soviet involvement in the UN conference, the ad went
on to say: "We affirm as evangelicals our belief in the promised land to
the Jewish people . . . . We would view with grave concern any effort to
carve out of the Jewish homeland another nation or political entity." The
ad was financed and coordinated by Jerusalem's Institute for Holy Land
Studies, an evangelical organization with a Christian Zionist orientation.
Several leading dispensationalists signed the ad, including Kenneth Kantzer
of Christianity Today and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, singer Pat
Boone, and dispensationalist theologian and Dallas Theological Seminary
president John Walvoord. The advertising campaign was one of the first
public signs of a Likud-evangelical alliance. A former employee of the
American Jewish Committee, Jerry Strober, who had coordinated the campaign,
made the political connection in a statement to Newsweek: "[The evangelicals]
are Carter's constituency and he [had] better listen to them... The real
source of strength the Jews have in this country is from the evangelicals."
At times the new alliance was uncomfortable for Jewish leaders. On one
such occasion, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Bailey
Smith, stated that "God does not hear the prayers of the Jews." Within
weeks, the AIC took Smith on a trip to Israel and corrected his views.
While Christian Zionists and Jewish organizations agree on many points,
the Christian Right's enthusiasm for evangelizing Jews remains an unresolved
point of tension. ...Likud policy was aggressively represented by AIPAC
both on Capitol Hill and within the Reagan administration. For example,
when Israel decided to invade Lebanon in the spring of 1982, Begin sent
Ariel Sharon, his defense minister, to Washington to enlist the Reagan
administration's support. By late May, Sharon was reportedly given the
green light by Secretary of State Alexander Haig. Within days of the June
invasion, full-page ads appeared in leading newspapers requesting evangelical
support for the invasion. Begin developed a unique relationship with Reagan
and many fundamentalist leaders, especially Jerry Falwell. Falwell and
his Moral Majority had long supported Israel. In 1979, Grace Halsell reports,
Israel gave Falwell a Lear jet and in 1981 gave him the prestigious Jabotinsky
Award during an elaborate dinner ceremony in New York. When Israel bombed
Iraq's nuclear plant in 1981, Begin called Falwell before he called Reagan.
He requested that Falwell "explain to the Christian public the reasons
for the bombing."... ***** BTW, in addition to the Jabotinsky Medal, Billy
Graham also received the following awards: The Torch of Liberty Plaque
by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 1969; International Brotherhood
Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1971; and First
National Interreligious Award, American Jewish Committee, 1977. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: -------------- There has been a rational,
anti-right-wing/pro-peace Israeli/Zionist left for 20 years, with its own
auxiliary in the U.S. Has its own magazine (Tikkun, w/the infamous Michael
'Politics of Meaning' Lerner). This is all old shit. My co-religionists
are not that simple-minded. I can easily imagine telling someone of this
sort of information, and if they didn't know they would say so what? Isn't
there an ulterior motive, and look how many Jews are in the ME compared
to those hostile to their presence. Perhaps this sort of thing is known
best of all to Israeli's. That the information content of the Israeli press
is vastly superior to the U.S. in all matters of the ME is an old story.
Sharon got lots of votes from people who didn't like him. I can't see how
they could have been misinformed. Mistaken yes, misinformed no. It is possible
to make mistakes despite the availability of information. For the same
reason, I find plausible now stories to the effect that Sharon's political
decline is in progress. I welcome any correction by those closer to the
situation. mbs ------------- > And a while ago A. Finlayson wrote: > <
While information alone is never enough, I think both you & Finlayson
> are overestimating what people know, assuming that everyone is a > media
junkie like most leftists. This overlaps a point I made in various discussions
of "conspiracy theory." Quite aside from the probable falsity of all such
theories, promulgating them is a significant barrier to a far more important
revelation: Exposing open secrets. Instead of running around trying to
prove that there is a CIA plot someplace or other we need to be spreading
the kind of news that is available to anyone but that (a) most people (for
fairly good reasons) don't search out or (b) isn't important unless people
both know it but _know_ that others _know_. That's why factory exposures
at one time were so effective. What was the readership of those exposures?
Why the very factory workers the leaflets talked about -- that is, those
who were experiencing the abuses described but in an important sense didn't
know they were until they saw them in print and knew that others were seeing
them in print -- were seeing them _collectively_. It doesn't help if all
280 million americans know that Sharon is a killer. They have to know that
everyone else knows it and knows that...... Expose what people already
know but can't acknowledge to themselves or others that they do know it.
Carrol ------------- Both Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell (who says that
Antichrist will be Jewish) were presented with the Jabotinsky Centennial
Medals by Prime Minister Menachem Begin for friendship to Israel. As for
Nixon: ***** Jewish World Review / Oct. 14,1998 / 24 Tishrei, 5759 Remembering
Nixon --- the 'anti-Semitic' prez who saved Israel during the Yom Kippur
War By David Twersky ...Was Nixon a Jew hater? The evidence piling up certainly
suggests so. But the question lingers because of his role in helping -
many would say, saving - Israel in the dark days of the Yom Kippur War,
25 years ago this week. Israel had run dangerously low on ammunition until
Nixon okayed sending planeload after planeload to resupply the depleted
Israeli military stocks. In Israel, Nixon is recalled with great fondness
as a true friend. This is true particularly in the Israeli Labor Party,
some of whose members were in the Golda Meir government or in senior army
positions during the '73 war.... ...Nixon wasn't only sweet on Israel,
a small anti-communist country that was, wonder of wonders, a democracy
to boot. Israel had "moxie" - an in-your-face readiness to face up to dangerous
enemies. Nixon was the first president to recognize, for purposes other
than pro-Israel lobbying, that there was an American Jewish community system.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations greatly
expanded its role under Nixon, in large part because of close ties between
the president and Max Fisher of Detroit and Jacob Stein of Long Island,
New York. J.J. Goldberg, in his book Jewish Power, goes so far as to say,
"Under the Nixon administration, the Presidents Conference became what
it had always aspired to be: the official voice of American Jewry."...
..."It remained for Richard Nixon," Goldberg writes, "to create the now
familiar U.S.-Israel allianceŠ It was Nixon who made Israel the largest
single recipient of U.S. foreign aid; Nixon who initiated the policy of
virtually limitless U.S. weapons sales to Israel. The notion of Israel
as a strategic asset to the United States, not just a moral commitment,
was Nixon's innovation. "Yet Nixon was widely reviled in the Jewish communityŠ.
And the dislike was mutual."... ***** The question that Cockburn doesn't
but should have asked is why American Jews continue to let Zionists monopolize
the leadership of Jewish communities, allowing them to claim to be "the
official voice of American Jewry," when the very Zionist leaders in America
and Israel have clearly made alliances with Jew-haters (be they Christian
fundamentalists or power-hungry politicians) for the sake of US (military,
financial, diplomatic, & moral) support for Israel. Yoshie Duh. Why
do people in Ohio elect Republican senators? because most American Jews
support a Jewish state and accept the need for some measure of realpolitik
as the price for that, including alliances with obnoxious people; and because
those who don't accept such realpolitik have no power to dislodge the bourgeois
zionist leadership. you don't use the terminology "the Jews," but you seem
to be referring to some unitary, conscious agency, where there is none.
-mbs > The question that Cockburn doesn't but should have asked is why
> American Jews continue to let Zionists monopolize the leadership of >
Jewish communities, allowing them to claim to be "the official voice >
of American Jewry," when the very Zionist leaders in America and > Israel
have clearly made alliances with Jew-haters (be they Christian > fundamentalists
or power-hungry politicians) for the sake of US > (military, financial,
diplomatic, & moral) support for Israel. ------------ Ace on The Jews
"Max B. Sawicky" At the risk of piling on, let me just advise the untutored
that the expression "The Jews"* doing ANYTHING is prima facie anti-semitic.
It is impossible for "the Jews" to do anything, besides be jewish. If every
last media magnate was jewish, it would still not follow that "the Jews"
controlled the media. Jews are not a corporation. The same follows for
"the Arabs," "the Palestinians," "the Blacks," etc. I seem to recall Carrol
making this point w/respect to Dave McReynolds and Palestinians, though
if you know Dave M. you know it was more a mistake than an expression of
malice. ^^^^^^^^ CB: See _Jews without Money_, by Mike Gold. You do get
statements like "The African-Americans have made great contributions to
the building of the country" that are considered the a respectful formulation.
I guess the "rule" is it is ok to refer to good things but not bad things
overgenerally. The Jews have a long history of struggle. I think it's the
word "the". "The" implies "all" which is incorrect when in fact it is "some".
If you say " African-Americans dominate the play in the NBA" , it's not
incorrect without the "the" , no ? Canadiens dominate the National Hockey
League. No,no's: "The African-Americans control the drug trade in such
and such a city" , "The Arabs dominate the gas stations" vs. Gas stations
are predominantly Iraqi owned in Detroit. Anyway, maybe Cockburn has been
hanging out with the Militias too much. ^^^^^^^ To be honest, I have to
say I can't be sure I haven't employed the same usage w/respect to other
groups. But if I did, I'm pretty sure I wasn't dumb enough to make a column
out of it! Cockburn has really slipped down a rung, and he wasn't that
high to begin with. mbs ----------------- Hope I'm not getting into this
discussion too late. Seth pointed out a couple of days ago, I think that
-- "And there are huge numbers of Jews in the US media and in Hollywood.
Jews joke about this all the time, I don't see why anyone else should be
timid about mentioning it. But the idea that Jewish "media influence" is
the cause of the pro-Israel bias is ridiculous. Before Israel became a
prized US asset, the New York Times had a policy of not allowing Jewish
correspondents to cover Israel. There's also evidence the Times covered
up information about the Holocaust out of fear of being seen as advancing
some Jewish cause. Today the Times has several Jewish correspondents in
Israel and, to my knowledge, no Arabs." Quite right. One of the usually
unacknowledged sources of the mass American support for Israel, and for
the Zionist idea comes not from Jews at all, but from a very widespread
part of a conventional Protestant outlook, which finds its most clear expression
in the Christian right but which has broader appeal. It is a sort of unsystematic
biblical literalism -- not the same as biblical inerrancy, which touches
on other issues and has narrower real appeal -- that sees Jews as the normal
occupiers of the eastern Mediterranean territory just because you can read
about it in the good book. This means that support for Zionism is a subcategory
of American-exceptionalist culture, inasmuch as American exceptionalism
has always meant, culturally, that Americans are more religious than people
in other advanced countries tend to be. I have very vivid memories of discussions
in elementary school 45 or 50 years ago, in which we talked about "current
events" as portrayed in MY WEEKLY READER. We also had Bible readings since
this was long before the Supreme Court school prayer decision. In these
discussions there was a constant confusion between "Israelite" and "Israeli"
as key terms. The usual American disposition to see matters in racist terms,
of course, certainly played a large rôle too, with the "Israelites/Israelis"
appearing as "white." Check out Sunday-school book illustrations from back
then to see how Aryan the Jews looked. Thus the inherent racism of Zionism
resonates well with the most backward aspects of American folk culture.
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema ---------- I read a book on the history
of Zionism; the book started with a map of Europe, showing in each country
the date in which the Jews were emancipated. Do these dates remind you
of anything? : 1789, 1848, 1917. But the liberation of an oppressed people
is not a boon for everyone; what were all the little ghetto bosses going
to do? Well, as it turns out, build their very own ghetto, with their very
own army and their very own bombs and their very own concentration camps.
----- .... all the socialist jews I know do raise their voices...but who
will publish or broadcast what they say? Joanna ----------- By "derivative"
I meant that the Zionist notion of "peoplehood" was a modernized version
of the chosen people myth. Would you disagree? And weren't the early Zionists
appealing for membership to populations that the orthodox wanted to hold
onto? I think you may be right in the last sentence, but still, didn't
Zionism regard orthodoxy as old-hat and not up to addressing the threat
of modern anti-Semitism? As I recall, Herzl's turn towards Zionism came
when, as a journalist, he covered the Dreyfus trial and concluded that
founding a Jewish state was the only way. In other words, he, the orthodox,
and, of course, the anti-Semites all shared a view of Jews as "a people"
and he decided the only useful approach to the problems that implied was
to ape the racial nationalism then prevalent in many bourgeois circles
in Europe, particularly to the East. Ironically, the eventual outcome of
the Dreyfus Affair tended to vindicate modern democracy as a guarantor
of human rights. Admittedly it took years, poor Captain D languished on
Devil's Island for an unconsciounable period of time, and so forth, but
he did survive, and was reinstated in the French army. The Dreyfus affair
deserves re-examination in light of the current importance of patriarchal
monotheist religious ideologies both in the US and elsewhere, e.g. Al Quaeda,
etc. Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema -------------- Yes, I thought that
last paragraph of Cockburn's was odd. Like how it was odd for that Polish-American
group leader to falsely say Rahm Emanuel was an Israeli citizen and had
been in the Israeli army. I caught Hitchens on a morning CSPAN call-in
show not too long ago and he was talking about the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict when a caller asked about "the Jews" and the media in a subtle,
sinister way and Hitchens did a great job of making the point you're making.
You would think Cockburn would know better. Maybe he's just seeing what
sort of a reaction he'd get, for whatever reason. Even that would be strange.
Peter ---------------- On Fri, 15 Mar 2002, [Windows-1252] Christopher
Rhoades Dÿkema wrote: > But wouldn't it make sense for the orthodox
to be the last to support > a derivative of their outlook that, at least
at the time, would have > threatened to supplnant them? ------------ In
fact of course there are orthodox Jews who oppose the state of Israel on
theological grounds -- including a community in Jerusalem. They hold that
it's impious to jump the eschatological gun, as it were, by founding a
Jewish state in Palestine before Messiah comes. Given that rabbinic Judaism
is founded in reaction to -- and horror at -- the messianic Judaism that
produced the disastrous wars of the first two centuries C.E., they have
a good bit of the tradition on their side. --CGE --------- It wasn't derivative,
and there was simply no competition. Early zionists and orthodox lived
in different worlds. The orthodox constituted entire communities. The zionists
were by contrast a little club. Until the Holocaust nobody in his right
mind would expect the latter to be 'supplanted.' -mbs But wouldn't it make
sense for the orthodox to be the last to support a derivative of their
outlook that, at least at the time, would have threatened to supplnant
them? Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema --------- By "derivative" I meant
that the Zionist notion of "peoplehood" was a modernized version of the
chosen people myth. Would you disagree? And mbs: only in the most superficial
sense. I'll defer to others more expert on the prominence of what you call
the "chosen people myth" in Judaism, but it sounds like b.s. to me. weren't
the early Zionists appealing for membership to populations that the orthodox
wanted to hold onto? mbs: I doubt it. I think they were appealing to secularists
like themselves. I think you may be right in the last sentence, but still,
didn't Zionism regard orthodoxy as old-hat and not up to addressing the
threat of modern anti-Semitism? mbs: perhaps, but so what? As I recall,
Herzl's turn towards Zionism came when, as a journalist, he covered the
Dreyfus trial and concluded that founding a Jewish state was the only way.
In other words, he, the orthodox, and, of course, the anti-Semites all
shared a view of Jews as "a people" mbs: they were a people. common language,
religion, culture, geography. everything but a state. That doesn't establish
any meaningful connection between zionism and traditional orthodoxy. and
he decided the only useful approach to the problems that implied was to
ape the racial nationalism then prevalent in many bourgeois circles in
Europe, particularly to the East. Ironically, the eventual outcome of the
Dreyfus Affair tended to vindicate modern democracy as a guarantor of human
rights. mbs: and I can imagine jews of that time saying in unison, thanks
for nothing! that's what I would have said. . . . Admittedly it took years,
poor Captain D languished on Devil's Island for an unconsciounable period
of time, and so forth, but he did survive, and was reinstated in the French
army. The Dreyfus affair deserves re-examination in light of the current
importance of patriarchal monotheist religious ideologies both in the US
and elsewhere, e.g. Al Quaeda, etc. Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema mbs:
this has come up before. Present company excepted, the impulse to delineate
a thread from the Old Testament to Herzl and Jabotinsky is ahistorical.
It uproots political Zionism and Israel from history in favor of some primordial,
retrograde line of thinking unique to The Jews. ------------ Just thought
I'd expand a little on Zionist - Nazi collaboration. More on Zionism at
http://www.codoh.com/zionweb/ziondark/zionism.html The Fraud of Zionism
by Wilbur Sensor (...) Zionism was founded on the mutual incompatibility
of Jew and Gentile. As such it had a built in incentive for collaborating
with another ideology built on the incompatibility of Jew and Gentile -
Nazism. Zionist collaboration with National Socialism dates almost from
the inception of the Hitler regime. The Ha'avara, or Transfer Agreement
dates from May, 1933. Under this arrangement approximately 10% or 50-60,000
of Germany's 500-600,000 Jews were sent to Palestine with their assets
minus an exit tax. This fulfilled the Zionist desire to reroute Jews to
Palestine while promoting the Nazi desire to rid Germany of Jewish influence.
Zionism enjoyed the official favoritism of the Hitler government. Numerous
articles praising Zionism appeared in the German press. Dr. Joseph Goebbels,
Reich Propaganda Minister, commissioned a special medallion commemorating
Zionism. The Zionist blue and white flag was the only national symbol permitted
to fly in Germany other than the swastika. More importantly, special Zionist
training camps existed in Germany to train German Jews for agricultural
work in Palestine. On at least one occasion, Chaim Weizmann the future
first president of Israel vetoed the Rublee-Schact plan of January, 1939
which would have removed all Jews from Germany within a five year period.
Weizmanns reason for so doing? He felt it was preferable to leave the Jews
under German control so that they could later be sent to Palestine, rather
that allow them to choose their own destination. In this regard Weizmann
endorsed the thinking of his political rival, David Ben-Gurion: "If I knew
that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing
them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz
Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh
not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People
of Israel." (Yoar-Gelber, Zionist Policy and the Fate of European Jewry
(1939-42), Yad Vashem Studies, vol. XII,p.199.) (...) Hannah Arendt wrote
in "Eichmann in Jerusalem" that if it weren't for the collaboration of
Jewish authorities in Palestine and Jewish leaders in Europe with the Nazis,
far more Jews would have been saved from the Holocaust. She was attacked
and slandered by the ADL, of course. http://www.codoh.com/zionweb/ziondark/zionhol02.html
Hakki -------------